COUNTRY GLEE
by: Thomas Dekker
- AYMAKERS, rakers, reapers, and
mowers,
- Wait on your Summer-queen;
- Dress up with musk-rose her eglantine bowers,
- Daffodils strew the green;
- Sing, dance, and play,
- 'Tis holiday;
- The sun does bravely shine
- On our ears of corn.
- Rich as a pearl
- Comes every girl,
- This is mine, this is mine, this is mine;
- Let us die, ere away they be borne.
-
- Bow to the Sun, to our queen, and that fair one
- Come to behold our sports:
- Each bonny lass here is counted a rare one,
- As those in a prince's courts.
- These and we
- With country glee,
- Will teach the woods to resound,
- And the hills with echoes hollow:
- Skipping lambs
- Their bleating dams,
- 'Mongst kids shall trip it round;
- For joy thus our wenches we follow.
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- Wind, jolly huntsmen, your neat bugles shrilly,
- Hounds make a lusty cry;
- Spring up, you falconers, the partridges freely,
- Then let your brave hawks fly.
- Horses amain,
- Over ridge, over plain,
- The dogs have the stag in chase:
- 'Tis a sport to content a king.
- So ho ho! through the skies
- How the proud bird flies,
- And sousing kills with a grace!
- Now the deer falls; hark, how they ring!
'Country Glee' was originally published
in The Sun's Darling (1656). |
MORE
POEMS BY THOMAS DEKKER |
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